Chapter Text
Fenelope Rennet seemed to be destined forever and always to be the ugliest of her sisters. Her hair was brown and heaped on her head in a mess of untamed curls, while her sisters were graced with fair, blonde hair that flowed elegantly down past their shoulders. Her eyes were a dull green that could be more easily and more accurately compared to the swamp and sludge of a pig pen than any shining emerald, and were not the stark, clear blue that shone brightly under the dark lashes her sisters had. Her lips were neither full nor pink, and her cheeks were donned with freckles rather than a delicate blush. The pastels their mother insisted they wear elevated all her sisters to a perfect balance of springtime coloring, but simply made Fenelope look drab and grey.
Her temperament was no less different than her personality. She was unafraid of speaking with logic and reason that seemed better suited to men or whoever had agency. She was quick witted and sarcastic, and she instinctually expressed her opinion as freely as a woman could—which was hardly at all. So she found herself forced to ignore the urge when it would do no good.
Even now she found herself biting the inside of her cheek as her mother rambled on about the many tragedies of being ‘mansion rich’ and not ‘castle rich.’
“If only one of my twenty three eligible daughters could marry so rich,” Mrs. Rennet lamented. “But only my dear Felicity seems to think the same. Thank God she inherited my devilishly good looks, without she wouldn’t have captured the attention of that mysterious Mr. Floufry.”
Fenelope rolled her eyes at her tea. That Mr. Floufry was nothing but a dangerous rake and a werewolf. He was quite possibly the most evil man in England. The whole Ton was obsessed with him, and he had taken a strange, obviously lust-fueled interest in her sister.
“Oh Fen, if you hadn't been so ugly, mayhaps you could have helped us as such,” Mrs. Rennet put her own tea down and turned to Fenelope. She had the look of one who was about to give a speech one gave much too frequently for anyone to give it any thought anymore. Fenelope had spaced out with a carefully placid smile on her face the moment the words ‘unfortunately brunette’ left her mother’s mouth.
Once she had listened to her mother ramble about how unattractive she was for about an hour, Fen slipped out of the drawing room. She checked on her father and had to extract a letter opener from his hands before he could stab his own eyes out. Only then could she escape from the house.
The moment she stepped out onto the grounds, the tension in her shoulders loosened. She closed her eyes and took a breath, letting the overbearing perfume of the excessive buttercups and ranunculus in the front gardens sting her sinuses. She made her way around the house, ignoring her grey sisters loitering at the garden walls, where they could see the young women of Ton promenading with their suitors. She took the long path out to the lake so that she wouldn’t have to pass by the Floufry estate and probably witness some horrible obscenity or other. She just wants a moment alone, no obscenities or vaguely explained yet genuinely depressing circumstances. Just one moment.
She stood at the edge of the lake with a handful of rocks and pebbles, chucking them one at a time into the water. Her thoughts ran through her mind like her silly sister to that horrible excuse for a human man. ‘If only’ this, ‘if only’ that.
She caught her reflection in the pond. Unfortunately brunette, swamp eyes, ugly, ugly, ugly. She swung the rest of her ammo into the wobbly reflection.
If only mother would learn to fuck off like—
“Oh, please don’t disturb the water too much," a voice rang out to her right.
Fenelope whirled around. “Rupert!”